Palm to Palm
by orangeflavor
Summary: "They breathe together and imagine a world where nothing beautiful ever dies and hearts are never shattered. A world where their hands could intertwine and it would be enough." - Shepard and Kaidan learn to love again. A story of reconciliation, of one hand reaching for another.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This is a very, VERY belated Secret Santa gift fic for the talented **tlcinbflo**.

Palm to Palm

" _They breathe together and imagine a world where nothing beautiful ever dies and hearts are never shattered. A world where their hands could intertwine and it would be enough."_ \- Shepard and Kaidan learn to love again. A story of reconciliation, of one hand reaching for another.

Kaidan's hand in her own is calloused, dry, his grip too loose to be comforting and too tight to be accepting. The buildings of Horizon loom behind them, the clearing littered with Collector bodies around the defense canon.

But all she can feel and see and _think of_ is the weight of his hand in hers. The thread of unease that ties their palms together.

He pulls away first.

"Commander." It is a gruff greeting, his hands sliding back to his sides as though they never belonged there.

She knows where they used to belong.

But his touch is distant now and the shuffle of armor between them when they stand apart is deafening in the silence that breaks across their lips.

Miranda crosses her arms behind Shepard and watches. Grunt scratches at his cheek and looks bored.

Eons and epochs and all the ancient, lost history of two years dead stretches out between them.

The tears pool in her eyes because she already knows.

She _knows_.

His hands have said it all.

They walk from each other as strangers.

* * *

Shepard looks at herself in the mirror. Her eyes trace the length of her jaw, the curving arc of her nose, the sharp line of an eyebrow. She turns her head one way, then the next, trying to find some hint to what it was.

What did he _see_?

Her jaw clenches, teeth locking hard over each other and she smothers the whimper she is ashamed has made its way from her gut through her throat and then dangerously close to air. She chokes on it.

There are lines all along her body that she will always recognize. The white cut of flesh over her clavicle where the bone had broken and jutted through the skin. A thin, raised stretch of skin along her arm where a bullet had grazed. The jagged, malformed skin of her ear where a knife had shot through and near taken off the lobe. She knows these scars. They are as intimate to her as his touch used to be.

She thinks she sees herself in the reflection.

But the way he had looked at her –

Shepard scrunches up her nose in frustration and then there – _there_ – barely visible as the skin of her cheek is stretched taut, she sees it. The faint web of cybernetics whispering across her flesh.

This she does not recognize.

The anger brews hot and instant in her chest, her breath snapping tight in her throat, her shoulders taut and stretched back.

Always just beneath her skin. Tech and metal and cold, unfeeling machinery.

It will always be closer to her heart that him. It is a truth she knows she will hate for life.

Her wrath flares from her suddenly, and her fist slams into the mirror, a single, solitary bash that shatters the glass beneath her knuckles. Jagged pieces fall into the sink as she pants, holding her bleeding fist to the broken mirror. Her eyes lift from the glass-filled sink to her shifted, incomplete reflection.

And she thinks she sees it.

Some flicker of her old life. Hiding behind the cracks, in the slivers of half-images. She locks gazes with this shattered Shepard. It is then that she knows. She must be real, true, _herself_ , or else it wouldn't hurt this much.

The sob that erupts from her throat is two years overdue and just as dead.

She knows how to recognize 'broken'.

She slides down to her knees. Her blood leaves a thin red trail along the porcelain sink.

* * *

She learns to live with this new Shepard. She learns to listen to her instincts, to not smother her emotions, to breathe and speak and _feel_ like this new Shepard.

There are many aboard the SR-2 that have never known the old Shepard. She is strangely at peace with that.

Sitting at the table in the mess, Shepard watches as Jack plants a foot on the chair next to her, leaning over the table as she retells an exaggerated escape story, fist smashing into palm with a menacing smile. Jacob chuckles from across the table, lowering his mug from his mouth so as not to spurt coffee through his nose. Grunt calls the biotic out. Jack rolls her eyes. Tali puts her two cents in. The table is alive again, uproarious with laughter, half-veiled insults and indignant shouts.

Shepard wraps her hands around her mug and dips her gaze to the warm liquid. Life goes on.

She nearly cries at the thought.

* * *

When she receives his letter she almost deletes it outright. She can hear his voice at her ear and her chest constricts at the sound. She is trembling before she knows it, her breath stalled in her throat.

She doesn't want to love what will never come back.

She doesn't want to imagine his lips at her throat or his cheek pressed to hers or the steady, warm weight of his hand wrapped around her own.

She doesn't want to _want_.

She reads the letter anyway.

* * *

She hadn't truly thought she'd survive the suicide mission to the Omega Four Relay. When she returns to Alliance space, whole and alive and _her_ , he is at the docking port where she surrenders herself.

They catch each other's glances from across the hall.

Shadow filters between them.

He opens his mouth as though to speak and then – only air.

He keeps his hands clenched tightly behind his back. She will never know how violently they shook.

* * *

The Reapers are on Earth and everything is different now.

"Grab my hand!" he calls from the cargo ramp of the Normandy, the wind whipping the waves of Vancouver's bay around them. She bounds up the ruined dock, rifle held tightly to her side, breath heavy in her ears. She leaps over the ledge and onto the ramp, her hand reaching for his instantly, instinctually, wrapping her gloved fingers around his own and then holding tight.

He hauls her up. She settles beside him. Their gazes lock for only a moment, just enough that when their hands pull back she can see the flicker of regret that passes through his eyes.

She will never know what for.

And he will never have the strength to tell her.

Some part of her understands the stilted silence between them.

The larger part rages at it.

She looks back to Anderson and finds him rooted to the collapsing dock.

Hours later, when they are suiting up for their drop to Mars, Kaidan stills with his hand poised over the clasp to his shoulder plate. He swallows audibly, brows furrowed.

Shepard shifts her gaze to him, her attention swerving so forcefully to him that she stills as well, her hands mid-load on her pistol.

The sigh that drags through him hurts even her and she narrows her eyes so swiftly he would have missed it had he even been looking.

"I'm sorry, Shepard," Kaidan begins, and before she can question him further he looks to her, arm lowering from over his shoulder. "About Earth. Anderson. All of it." He clears his throat and continues. "I'm sorry we had to leave."

She lets the words slide over her tongue before answering. The sharp snap of her heatsink loading into her pistol's chamber cracks the air between them. "There's a lot in the world to be sorry for, Kaidan. For both of us. But not that."

His brows knit tightly together at her words, lips parting as though to speak but she is turning from him.

"We both knew this war was coming." Her words are brittle in her throat. They taste like sand and gun polish. "We both knew this was bigger than Earth." She is about to walk from him when he catches her wrist.

She stills, silent as glass. Her lids flutter closed and they are both breathing so _loud_ in the room, the air so thin, the lights so stark.

His fingers loosen until his hand barely circles the graceful lines of her wrist. Her back remains to him.

"Even still," he manages, barely a choked whisper. Barely more than air between his teeth.

When she cuts a sidelong glance his way, she finds his eyes on the floor, the bright glint of wetness dotting the edges.

There is pain there that is more than _them_. More than _her_.

Their home lays burning behind them and it is all they can do not to break.

"Even still," he repeats, this time lost somewhere between his trembling mouth and the cold, grey floor. This time like a broken promise.

Shepard shifts back a step, closer to him, slowly pulling her arm from his grasp. His fingers fall away unhindered. His gaze lifts from the floor.

"We're going back," she affirms. Her lips pull into a tight frown. She feels a galaxy of fear stirring in her gut. There is bile at the back of her throat. "It isn't over." She hopes more than anything that it is true.

He nods. Just once. Just the soft tilt of his head that tells her he's heard her.

But they both know they are just empty words.

Shepard feels sick suddenly and must turn from him.

Kaidan returns to his armor in silence.

Shepard reminds herself to breathe.

There is nothing more to say between them.

* * *

When they unhook the Cerberus soldier's helmet, it is the stench that hits her first. A sharp, acrid wave of decay, like tepid water and rancid meat. She pulls back quickly, leaning on her haunches, one hand held to her mouth.

It's the eyes that keep her riveted.

Brilliant and glass-tinged.

A hollow home.

"What the hell?" Kaidan curses low, the helmet in his hand clattering to the floor beside them.

She looks to him and he only has eyes for the corrupted piece of human flesh before them.

Her lungs clamp down on the puff of air trying to escape.

"Is this what Cerberus did to you?"

It is a deafening silence that cascades around them. They both feel the pulse of her sudden, shifted anger in the space between them. Shepard is screaming inside. But she has only the mind to curl hr hands into tight fists and push from the floor.

"Shepard, wait, I –"

He doesn't get to finish.

"No," she snaps, twirling on him, finger raised in the air. "How dare you, Kaidan?" she seethes through clenched teeth.

His lips part as though there are words trapped behind them but it is a harsh croak that leaves him, hands held in the air like a surrender.

It only serves to anger her further.

Her brows sharpen down, her deadly stalk back toward him swift and tight. She stops just before him. "How dare you," she breathes lowly, a heated whisper almost devoid of air.

She may as well have slapped him. It would have hurt less than the harsh exhale of her words.

"I am _alive_ , Kaidan," she bites out, jabbing a finger into her chest as though she can break straight through to her heart, as though she could show the weight and thud and heave of it and he could _know_ that she was real. She keeps her hand at her chest, curled tight into a fist. She pounds it once more against her armor and the heavy thump of it anchors her further.

Solid.

Real.

 _Her_.

"I am alive, Kaidan. I am here, and me, and not some dirty, fucking corpse of a Cerberus science project. I'm not some shell that walks and talks and acts like me but _is_ me. And I don't know how else to show you, to _tell_ you, because my word should be enough. Because after everything you've seen of me and all you know of me and all I've _given_ to you, my word _should be enough_." Her voice cracks, her fingers gripping to the chestplate of her armor as though it could steady the thunder of her heart against her ribcage.

She can see the way he shatters at her words. The tight line of his brow, the parted lips, so parched for words she might just _drown_ in the silence. The horror is splashed across his face in vivid red.

"I don't…" He pauses. Licks his lips. Lowers his hands and takes a single, steadying breath. "I'm sorry, Shepard. I'm so… _so_ sorry. This isn't…this is not what I want between us. Because I _know_ it's you. I know. You've shown me time and again that it's you but I…I just lost so much when I lost you. I think I lost a part of myself too and I don't know how to get it back. I've been scared and alone for so long, and then you're there and _real_ and not some haunted nightmare, not some cruel joke but it just _hurts_ too much to think that you're out in the world and I'm not with you and I don't know how to _fix_ that." He ends on a heavy pant of breath, his heart laying on the floor between them.

It is as bloody and torn as hers.

But she has spent too much time looking at his back and not enough remembering the feel of his hand in hers.

Shepard sucks in a quick breath at the look of devastation on his face and closes her eyes. Tries to breathe. "It starts with trust, Kaidan," she whispers to the dead air between them. Her lids flutter open once more. She can see the muscles in his neck move. She can see the harsh clench of his jaw. "It starts with open eyes, with honesty. It starts with looking at each other, with really _seeing_ each other. Because we both know we aren't the same people we once knew. But when we can be okay with that, when we can learn that it's _okay_ to change, that who we are now isn't wrong but _necessary_ , then maybe – maybe if we're lucky – we can learn to live with ourselves."

The sound that leaves him will stay with her for years to come.

It's her undoing, and his, in a single, sharp-edged breath. A desolate choke of air that scars his throat with regret.

Everything is suddenly still and quiet within her. "I won't apologize for this woman I've become, Kaidan. It's the only way I've survived until now. But I'm tired of just surviving. I'm ready to live." Her hands clench into fists at her sides, her shoulders pulled taut. "Let me know when you can say the same."

It is too easy a thing to walk away.

Neither of them do.

Shepard stands rooted for a long, long time. Until Liara's hesitant voice on the comm. calls her over. Until her hands have stopped shaking. Until Shepard can close her eyes and not see the terror of blinding stars and empty space.

Until they each understand what it means to die and breathe again.

* * *

She had wished for many things but not this. Not his body, bruised and bloodied, on a _Normandy_ medical bed.

She reaches for his hand without hesitation.

He doesn't hold it back.

She whispers his name in the silence and slowly, like the quiet bleeding of dusk into night, Shepard begins to crack.

* * *

She doesn't allow herself the breath of relief upon news of his recovery. There is still too much ahead to think that any of this could end well.

That any of them could make it out whole.

She settles into the seat beside his bed and the soft rustle of sheets is the only thing heard for many moments.

"I'm glad you came," he croaks, then clears his throat.

Shepard slides her hands along her thighs and then stills them over her knees. It is only a grunt of acknowledgment that leaves her.

His gaze shifts to his hands over his lap. "There's too much I need to say, too much I need to make up for, to have it end like that." He blows a slow breath through his lips, eyes never leaving his hands.

Shepard shifts in her seat but stays silent.

Kaidan swallows tightly, licking his lips. "I was terrified." It is barely a whisper and Shepard narrows her eyes at the soft sound that leaves his mouth, wondering if she had imagined it.

He clears his throat and goes on. "I mourned you, Shepard." At this, his eyes find hers and they each still for a moment, simply watching each other. And then something flickers in his eyes that she will not put a name to and he continues, voice hoarse from ill-use. "I mourned you for two years. For two long, agonizing years. I hadn't thought anything could feel like that, but I survived. And I couldn't tell you how. But when I saw you on Horizon…when even the _possibility_ of that grief being a lie was before my eyes, I shut down. I couldn't handle losing you a second time."

"You can't use your fear as justification. That's not fair to me." Her mouth thins into a tight line. Her hands grip her knees. "Part of loving someone is being brave enough to risk that kind of loss."

"I did love you," he interrupts, eyes bright beneath the dark bruising of his face. His hands grip at the sheets pooling in his lap. "And I think you loved me too." His words end on a break.

Shepard pulls her lip between her teeth and shifts her gaze to the window. Light is blaring and sharp in the hospital room. Everything is stark and vibrant and too clear. Her voice shakes when she answers him. "Maybe not enough."

Several moments of stilted quiet pass between them, her with eyes to the bright outside, and him with eyes on his white knuckles.

Shepard curls her fingers over her knees and swallows a slice of memory back down. She doesn't want what is familiar anymore. She wants what she cannot live without. And she is still trying to understand the weight of such a thing. Even still, she feels she needs to say more.

Because there was always more between them.

"I…I didn't want you to die," she says, and then her brows are furrowing, her lips pursing. So stupid. So inadequate. But it is all she can manage when he is bloodied and broken before her. "And maybe that sounds – I don't know – impersonal? Just…so common, so…not enough after everything between us, but it's…it's…" She doesn't know herself what it is, and she hardly expects him to understand but if she tries to say more, then the weight of the room might actually break upon her shoulders and the light might all go out and she will sit there in quiet suffocation.

So she clamps her jaw down on deadened words as her arms stiffen and her face shifts to her hands.

His soft "I know" rattles the breath from her lungs and she cannot stay here anymore.

She moves to leave, the scrape of her chair awkwardly loud in the room.

"Shepard."

She stills, fingers on the door handle.

"You said you had to be this new Shepard to survive. That it was necessary."

She gulps, but doesn't answer. His voice drifts to her like blood on the wind.

"I had to survive too," he finishes. It is all the explanation he gives her.

Because 'sorry' means little to nothing between them at this point and there is only so much weight a heart can take before it shatters.

So she walks from the room and doesn't let him see her tears.

They are not for him.

* * *

The next time Shepard sees him it is over the barrel of her gun. The Council backs away from them, shuffling behind Kaidan. Her eyes flick to Udina and narrow.

Her fingers flex over her trigger as she warns, lowly, "I'm not here for you, Kaidan. I'm here for Udina." She nods at the traitor.

Kaidan's eyes narrow in confusion and he shifts between her sightline. "Talk to me Shepard. What's going on?"

The Citadel is burning and echoing with screams when she finds the words she needs. "I'm trying to protect you."

The sharpness of the silence between them reverberates off their bones and Kaidan takes in a single, slow breath. He glances to Garrus and Liara behind her, shoulders loosening. He looks back to Shepard, licks his lips. His hands stay tight on his pistol, barrel still aimed at her heart.

She does not lower her weapon. "It starts with trust," she whispers, barely loud enough to be heard but he catches it.

It is deafening in his ears.

His arm lowers. He sucks in a sharp breath and holds it. His lungs ache under the weight of his risk.

He catches the glint of remorse in her eyes before she moves toward them.

* * *

He finds her in Life Support after transferring over to the Normandy. His welcome is awkward and stiff from the crew. Joker is the only one with a friendly smile for him. It doesn't matter. Little else matters when she is wracked with pain.

The doors slide open and he enters to find her sitting at a table at the end of the room, hands grasped together over the smooth surface. She glances up at his entrance.

He makes it to the opposite side of the table and sits

Shepard's throat clenches as he sits in Thane's former seat, unknowing.

The soft thrum of the engine vibrates around them for several moments until Kaidan speaks, his voice low and rough. "Thank you, Shepard, for this chance."

Her eyes find his and she only nods, throat working around words that will never be heard.

The silence stretches out between them. Kaidan shifts in his seat, his hand coming up to rest along the table. "And…I'm sorry."

Shepard eyes him in question.

"For Thane and Mordin. Your crewmates." His gaze shifts down. "I heard of their…I heard of your loss." His fingers thrum along the table, once, softly.

Shepard pulls a tight breath in and spreads her hands along the table. "My friends," she corrects.

Kaidan looks at her, then nods.

Shepard's eyes are wet without her bidding. She turns away. "They were my friends," she repeats, as though the words alone could bring them back.

She knows it is pointless.

"And me?"

Shepard blinks at his question.

"Am I your…friend?" His voice breaks at the end there, his face pinched tight with hesitance.

She feels the ache in his words like it was born in her own gut. She purses her lips, inhaling slowly. "You always were, Kaidan. That never changed."

His shoulders ease their tension at her words. But his gaze is still cautious, still hard. His apprehension curls from him like smoke.

It is rife in the air between them.

"Would you have taken the shot?" he asks.

She does not need him to clarify. It is a question she has asked herself many times since the coup. She lies awake at night wondering if she could have taken one more lost, one more cold body. If she could have held that weight in her heart and kept breathing.

"Yes," she croaks out. She clamps her jaw around the word as it escapes, clipped and tight.

She doesn't expect his slow smile, or the way he releases the breath he was holding as though he had _hoped_ for it, waited for it. Needed it.

"At least now I know that some things will never change," he offers, his words a heavy exhale.

She sits in taut anticipation before him. Her arms begin to tremble.

He smirks, the soft chuckle that falls from his lips almost painful to her. She nearly bites her tongue clean off.

"You've never been afraid to make the hard choices," he explains, hand stretching out between them.

She looks at his offering, eyes blinking away hot tears.

The engines hum around her. The air is stale and cold and tight in her lungs.

She will never see their faces again. Those souls who knew her at her darkest.

The first sob that leaves her is choked back, swallowed down with a needful vehemence that belies her pain.

His palm is open to her. "You don't need to bear them alone," he whispers.

She closes her eyes and lifts a hand to cover her mouth, stilling the sob in its wake before it can truly come to air. She turns her head. Slowly, hesitantly, with her eyes on the cold, grey wall, she threads her fingers through his and anchors their touch to the table.

* * *

Kaidan has always had healer's hands. She sees it even now, the way he cradles Liara's elbow and applies the medi-gel. It's even in his voice, the soothing timbre that escapes him when he chuckles at Liara's petulant remark. His touch glides up her forearm, turning it in his hold to gauge the burns on the underside.

"Still blue," he teases. "I don't think it's going to scar." He lowers her arm.

Liara smiles and shakes her head at his words, a soft laugh falling from her lips. Her shoulders loosen their tension. Both parties move to stand from their crouch on the cavern floor.

Shepard watches a few feet away, her rifle-mounted light slanting a beam of brightness across from them.

"Ready to go, Commander," Kaidan reassures.

"What's keeping you, Shepard?" Grunt's rough voice cuts in over the comm.

Shepard raises a hand to her radio. "They're called 'Reapers', Grunt," she dead-pans into the link.

His sharp guffaw crackles through the line.

"Let's move," she orders, returning to her squad.

* * *

After the geth dreadnaught mission, Shepard is standing still and silent in the observation lounge when Kaidan finds her. The soft _woosh_ of the sliding door is almost comforting. She turns slightly to find him settling beside her, his hands moving behind his back. He releases a heavy sigh that even she can feel.

Shepard hadn't thought that comfortable silence was something they could still feel but here it is, easy and serene around them. She rather likes that he doesn't question her, doesn't ask that single, haunting question that has been on everyone's lips since she first set foot in the docking tube to the dreadnaught.

 _'How are you?'_

She doesn't know how to answer that. She doesn't know how to tell them that she was ready to die again. That the sudden sight of darkness and vast space, that the distant light of stars and ebbing flash of fire, so close, so tangible, but not _hot_ , not near enough for her to grasp, that all this, stilled the air in her lungs and sent her to violent trembling.

How does she tell them that she relived her death again and again and nothing ever changed?

So why bother asking? And why bother answering? No one wants to hear about it. And she doesn't have words enough to describe that kind of helplessness, that kind of silent suffocation.

They will never know what it is to die, and if they do, no one will be around to ask them about it.

So she clamps her mouth shut and whispers a tight 'Fine' through her lips, her back straight and eyes unblinking.

She turns to the glass of the observation lounge and watches the stars drift by. They are so suddenly far and the air is so suddenly full in her chest.

"I haven't seen you in the mess lately," he says instead.

She nearly sobs at the statement and she doesn't know why. "Yeah," she croaks, then clears her throat. "Haven't had much of an appetite."

"Are you overcompensating with stims?" he asks, his gaze lifted toward hers, but it is more tinted with concern than admonishment, and the thought makes her honest.

"Of course," she chuckles, rubbing the back of her neck, eyes downcast.

He doesn't say anything. Only sighs.

"I know," she begins, trying to cut the lecture off before it begins. "Just…don't worry, Kaidan. I only need…" She stops, swallows, looks out toward the glass and drops her hand from her neck. "Just give me some time and I'll be over it."

He watches her from the corner of his eye. "I didn't think it was…something a person could ever _get_ over."

She tightens her jaw and keeps her eyes on the glass.

Kaidan stumbles. "I didn't mean that you… I just…" He lifts his hands from his back and raises them like a surrender. And then he lowers them, his voice falling with his hands. "I just can't imagine what it must have been like." He trails off, eyes drifting spaceward and throat tightening after the words.

Shepard's eyes narrow toward him for a moment, breathing heavily with the memory. And then she tightens her hands into fists and pulls them behind her back. Because she would shatter the glass before her if she didn't. "I can tell you a little something about dying," she breathes in the tight air between them. She doesn't know what makes her say the words.

But maybe it's the way he doesn't look at her. The way his hands tremble and his jaw muscle ticks. Maybe it's the way he doesn't demand an explanation from her that makes her own need so suddenly visceral, so suddenly intense and instant and demanding.

"It was several long minutes," she breathes lowly, eyes still fixed to him from the side. "A tightness in my chest, and then a heaviness, like something crushing my ribcage. Disorientation. A desperate grasping for something, _anything_ , to hold onto. To steady myself." She looks to her boots. "I even reached for your hand, in some fever state of panic."

Kaidan looks up then, his whole face crumbling with her words.

She doesn't look to him, because she'd have to stop. She'd have to bury the memory back and smother it under false confidence and bravado. But it has already tasted air and she doesn't think something like that can be pushed back down, even if she wanted it. She doesn't think that kind of fear can be untasted. Unsaid.

So she continues. "My suit kept pumping medi-gel into my system, and the stims were working overdrive to keep me conscious so it…it was a long and…painful…suffocation." She swallows tightly and feels her nails cutting half-moons into her palms. "I think I screamed for you in the end."

She looks up then. And the horror on his face is enough for the memory to flash before her. Her desperate sobs, her terrified gulps of air that wouldn't come, her frantic searching for something, _someone_ , to right her, and hold her, and keep her steady through the night.

A night that took her and didn't let go for two, long years.

Kaidan braces his hands along the wall just below the window, hunching his back with the weight of her confession. He doesn't speak for many moments, and it is only the heavy sniff and shaky exhale of Shepard that fills the air around them.

"If only…" he begins, choking back his words suddenly. His hands quake against the wall before him. "If only I had been there, maybe…." He stops, shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut against the thought. "Maybe things would have been different." He looks to her then, his elbows buckling in their brace along the wall and he pushes from it, moving toward her.

She steps back, arms wrapping around herself and he stills, arms mid-reach for her.

How stupid.

To think that his touch could right this blistering, aching tangle of emotion between them.

To think that in his arms she could find closure. Salvation.

Peace.

His hands fall to the wayside.

Shepard curls her fingers in the fabric of her uniform, her breath catching in her throat.

"I'm sorry," is all he manages, voice hoarse.

"No," she urges, gaze shooting to his, her head shaking adamantly. "No, it's not…" She takes a steady breath in, wills her trembling to cease and in the tense, palpable quiet that breathes between them, Shepard finds some semblance of composure. "Even after everything, after all that, I think maybe…maybe it _needed_ to happen. Maybe it was right." Her fingers loosen their hold of her arms and her chest is suddenly less tight.

Kaidan watches her with eyes that are bight with unshed tears. He holds them back. Barely. "How could that ever be _right_?" he asks desperately, voice coarse like sand.

"To be who we are right now, Kaidan," she urges, voice shaking but not _broken_. Not lost. "To be where we are, and on the path that we're headed. To do the things we must and try for the things we need, maybe…maybe all this was necessary for us to…for us to _be_. Exactly as we are. And exactly where we are. Maybe everything that has happened is…is necessary. It's the only way I can accept what has happened to me, the only way I can be at peace with my death and my life and all the moments in-between that feel like neither. It's the only way I can come to terms with the person I am now. The fact that maybe all this brings me to something better, something greater than what I knew before."

Kaidan is breathless before her. He simply watches her, mouth open as though there are words on his tongue but nothing he can think to say seems like enough.

Shepard finally lets her arms drop from beside her, taking a hesitant step closer toward him. "I'm not the only one who's changed, Kaidan," she says pointedly.

He looks down then, the look of shame crossing his features unexpected to Shepard. She lifts his chin with her slender fingers. Their gazes lock for several thrilling moments. "It isn't wrong," she says, voice barely a whisper.

He sighs, his whole body easing with the sound. Her hand drops from his chin.

"I don't think any of what we are, or what we've become, is wrong," she affirms, shoulders going taut.

She is brilliant and glorious and unreachable to him suddenly. She is galaxies away from him. He aches with the distance.

Her voice is hushed and longing in the stillness of the room. "I don't think it's wrong to want the things we want." She gulps, hesitant.

They watch each other in silence, both needing, both wanting, both terrified.

Neither moves.

His hand is inches from hers. She could touch it if she wished, reach out and thread her fingers though his. Feel the reassuring weight of his palm pressed to hers. Feel the steadfast presence of his pulse against hers if she only reached for it.

She doesn't.

They are miles and breaths apart.

That night she holds his hand in her dreams and doesn't regret it.

* * *

The Thessian temple is falling apart around them when Shepard grasps for a higher edge along the crumbling ruin. The earth tremors and shakes around her, the wind beating down on her from the nearby Cerberus gunship. Her foothold slips and she nearly drops the dozens of feet down into ancient Prothean tech. She grits her teeth with the effort and holds fast to the collapsed floor.

"Shepard!" Kaidan calls above her, and she sees his gloved palm stretching toward her. He slides nearly over the edge, and she can see Liara grasping at his calves to hold him steady.

His eyes are frantic on hers, his sweat glinting off his forehead in the receding gunship lights.

Shepard groans from the ache in her elbow when her hand clasps over his wrist and he pulls her up, arms snapping tight from the weight. He drags her back over the edge and doesn't release her hand until she is pushing from him and running toward the retreating gunship. She pants her exhaustion, her pistol uselessly firing at the ship, her ribs aching from where Kaidan dragged her over the debris to a landing. She drops to her knees when they give out. Thessia rumbles beneath her hands.

She thinks maybe centuries have passed in the moments where she kneels, hands splayed against a dying world, her chest throbbing with her labored breaths. Her armor is suddenly too tight, too heavy. She can't _breathe_. Her arms tremble. She blinks the sweat from her eyes and watches the damp pant of her breath against the glass of her helmet.

In her ears, the horrifying screams of decimated asari units echo. Three more Reapers land in the distance and she simply cannot move. She watches the destruction, fingers curling in the dirt.

His hand on her shoulder is heavy and hesitant. "Shepard."

"Don't," she manages through clenched teeth.

A gulp of air. The tightening of his fingers along her shoulder. "Shepard…" This time softer, this time urgent.

" _Don't_ ," she seethes once more. Her eyes are wet without her bidding.

And then there is the heavy thud of his own knees dropping to the dirt next to her, the clunk of his rifle along the ground. The breath that leaves him sounds a million miles away. His hand curls around her shoulder until she is turned to him. He blinks, panting his own exhaustion. And then his face tightens with unspoken pain. " _Aiden_ ," he urges.

She watches him silently, shoulders caving in. And then she presses her forehead to his armored shoulder and chokes back a huff of air. Her hands stay pressed to the dirt and his fall uselessly to his sides. They stay like this for several moments, before Liara's uncontrollable sobs break through the silence. Shepard looks up into a blood-red sunset.

* * *

Kaidan makes it to her cabin door the night before the assault on Cerberus headquarters. When she answers it, she stares blankly at him, and then backs away from the door, motioning him to follow. He moves into the room, hand at the back of his neck. They stand in silence for several seconds. Shepard moves to the couch lining one wall and settles with her feet pulled up under her. She doesn't even spare him a questioning glance. She just stares out the window and sighs.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay, Commander," he begins, hesitant.

She pulls at the end of her shirt, fingers tangling in a loose thread.

He steps closer, just to the edge of the couch. He stays standing, clearing his throat. "If there's anything I can do, Shepard, please, let me know."

She looks at him then. Her brows furrow in thought over her eyes, and it would be so easy to forget the world outside, to take temporary comfort in each other that night.

But neither of them is interested in temporary. And Shepard is too scared to admit she might die that night and doesn't think she can bear the promise of 'tomorrow' when the end is so very near. So very certain.

She is ready to die for this war. For this galaxy. But she will not be strong enough to do it if she does not do it alone.

If she had the chance to do it over, or if she had more time, or hell, if a million other things had happened in their lives than what has already lead them to this point, then maybe – _surely_ , she thinks, because it hurts too much _not_ to think it – she might have spent this night in his arms.

But they are who they are. What is will always be. And she has already made her choice.

It's either the galaxy, or him. And she doesn't think she would deserve him if she chose selfishly.

Even still, she pats the space next to her and there is the hoarse croak of her voice that breaks the silence. "Stay."

He sits, eyes never leaving her. They breathe together and imagine a world where nothing beautiful ever dies and hearts are never shattered. A world where their hands could intertwine and it would be enough.

"I'm with you until the end, Shepard. Until we finish this," he whispers.

Her throat constricts at the words.

And then he chuckles, eyes downcast. "Don't know how helpful I'll be, not with the crew you run these days." He looks up at her. "You've gotten yourself a hell of a team, Shepard. I'm honored to be considered part of it." He smiles, thought it doesn't reach his eyes.

Shepard clears her throat. "I think the Normandy will always need you, Kaidan," she says softly, smile barely-there and shaking. Her eyes meet the glass window behind them. "I…will always need you." She licks her lips and keeps her gaze on space.

He takes a sharp breath in but doesn't move.

She is sure he can taste her terror in the air between them.

When she finally turns her gaze to his, he is steadily staring at her, brows furrowed over his eyes, hands clasped tightly in his lap. His knuckles are white, his jaw clenched tight.

It may be the last thing she asks of him and she cannot keep the question from slipping through her lips. "Can you just…hold my hand?"

Kaidan blinks the wetness from his eyes, back straightening slightly. He pulls a single, slow breath in and opens his trembling mouth. "Of course," he whispers, voice sure and steady and everything they are not.

He opens his hand to her and she takes it. They stay this way long into the night, breathing before the storm.

The next day she fights for that touch and loses.

The Crucible fires while she is still aboard and when she is blasted back from the explosion, her last thought is that of his hand in hers.

* * *

She wakes in an empty hospital room. Everything hurts. She can't see out of her left eye. She can't even feel her legs. Her chest feels crushed and her mouth is so dry it hurts just to suck air.

She cries for many, many minutes when she finally understands that she is alive.

Kaidan comes to see her the following day. He halts in the doorway upon seeing her and she nearly loses all composure at the thought of what he must be seeing.

Most of the skin on the left side of her face and torso is burned off, and it's only an enflamed web of tissue and cool, grey metal that holds her together. Her cybernetics glow lowly beneath the metal along her ribcage. One of her legs is gone, and the rest of her is pieced together in what she is sure is the most grotesque medical experiment in history.

But he smiles.

It is slow at first. Barely-there and quaking, like his breath. And then it blossoms out, flashing across his face so bright it hurts her chest to see it. She chokes on his name, her tongue thick and bulky in her mouth.

He moves to the bed and kneels down beside it, eyes glinting bright beneath tears. "I didn't…I wasn't sure if you were…" He stops, collects himself and continues. "The doctors said you might never wake up."

"You know I…" She coughs, swallows back the tightness and tries again. "You know how I love to…prove people wrong."

His tears finally fall and he doesn't bother to wipe them, his smile returning as he spreads his hands over the edge of the bed cautiously. "I should have known," he chuckles.

She chuckles as well, but then winces at the pain of it. Even her own voice feels wrong in her throat.

He watches her with concern until she settles, eyes glancing back up to him. "How long?" she croaks.

Kaidan looks to his hands on the bed. "A few months."

She nods, slow and deliberate. She looks up at the ceiling and tries to focus on her breathing.

"I've been scared shitless plenty of times in my life, Shepard, but never…never like that."

She glances to him.

His fingers curl along the sheet beside her, clenching uneasily. "But I don't want to be afraid anymore. I don't want to…be afraid to say the things I need to say. Whether you accept them or not, whether you reciprocate or not. I just…" He stills, eyes fixing to hers. "I will never want anything in this life more than I want you. I need you to know that. And I need you to understand that this isn't me asking for the same. This is me, ready to live my life for you, in whatever way you will have me. And if you're ready for that, then you just tell me. You tell me what you want, Aiden." He clamps his mouth shut after the words, his jaw aching with the clench of his teeth. His chest puffs out once with his uneasy breath, eyes unblinking on hers.

It is a slow, tender breath that leaves her, her gaze drifting to his hands clenching the sheet beside her. "I don't want to be afraid either," she whispers.

Kaidan watches her in tense hope for a single, breathless instant.

She looks at him.

He looks at her.

They see the years past and choices made and words silenced in each other's faces. They see the changes they had first feared, and then raged against, and then slowly, painstakingly, embraced in each other. They see a world that wasn't, and isn't, but _could_ be.

And they find comfort in the knowledge that such possibility is only a touch away.

Swallowing tightly, Shepard wills all her strength to her arm, where slowly, wincing slightly with the pain of it, she turns her wrist so that her hand rests palm-up in the sheets. She unfurls her fingers and stretches them out toward him. She shakes with the thrilling anticipation of her coming words.

Kaidan blinks at her open hand, his breath stilling in his chest.

Her voice is like the breaking of dawn after a long, dark night, and he beams beneath the light of it.

"Will you…will you hold my hand?" she asks.

He does.

Thus they face the years. Palm to palm. Fingers laced.

They never let go.


End file.
